Another good option for enclosing a small-board system would be an aluminium enclosure of the type used for guitar effects pedals. (Of course, a digital guitar pedal is an SBC in an aluminium box...) They're seriously robust (you can, of course, happily stand on one), they can quite easily be drilled to hold I/O and power ports and control interfaces wherever you want to put them, they can be painted or printed on in a variety of ways, they're available in a wide range of shapes and sizes and you can get them very cheap. See for example https://www.mammothelectronics.com/collections/enclosures (just as an illustration: I don't know enough about this particular supplier to endorse them).
For home hacking, I'd rather not use a conductive material for my enclosure - too many ways to release the magic smoke.
If I were making a large number of things that I needed to be that durable, I'd be happy to engineer all the standoffs and isolation properly, but frankly wood and plastic are just way easier for throwing something together in my garage.
Great enclosures. The all-metal design is an important property for guitar pedals, it acts as a noise shield. For the same reason, they're probably not the greatest choice for radio circuits.
Did you have good conductive contact between the lid and the body? This is important and needs to be over a larger area, not just points (otherwise you might have an antenna).
You can get special conductive tape (very beautiful btw, made from eg copper and conductive glue) and cover all the slits. This works better if you have conductive contact to the box, but still helps if not (in this case get the cheaper tape with non-conductive glue).
But as people involved in this space say, EMI is voodoo and I suspect praying to the EMI god, putting little metal amulets on all the cables and making strange markings with this conductive tape are all necessary to limit emissions below the limits. Homebrew electronics are the worst, and passing EMI tests with them can be a special kind of hell. </rant>
Radio waves will penetrate into a Faraday cage. How much they penetrate is a function of the cage's conductivity, holes size, waves frequency and the phase of the Moon. It also changes if you ground the cage, and if you are smiling or frowning at the moment.
Aluminium is great but sometimes expensive depending on the application and the market: one can purchase an aluminium pipe/rod/whatever at a hardware store for a lot less than a stomp box enclosure made with the same amount of the material and sold online. It's a niche market where a couple sellers can easily fix the prices.
Fortunately there's enough demand from DIY and small-business effects makers that a good selection of different Hammond-like boxes is cheap and readily available online even as single units, at least if you're willing to drill your own apertures. Maybe USD6-USD12 or so per box isn't near the unit cost but it's low enough not to worry about until you need at least a few ten of them. If you can accept something lighter but less stompable you can also get similar plastic enclosures for even less from electronics suppliers.
Yes, there are lots of off the shelf enclosures. I've been using Hammond aluminum extrusions with laser-cut black acrylic end plates to fit the connectors. The result is a nice black box.[1]
Many Arduino/Rasperry Pi type boards have connectors on every edge. It's hard to box those things. That's what motivates these two-plate "cases". If all the connectors are on one edge, it's easier to package the unit.
They follow a standard size series, with standard mounting hole offsets, corner radii, etc. The idea being that if you're designing a PCB, you may as well go with one of these sizes because the laser cut cases are commercially available, or someone following the design can make their own easily too.
They work great with minimal modification for the Pi, Adafruit protoboards, etc.
I love dangerous prototypes sick of beige. I think they discontinued it, but they used to have an amazing SMD protoboard. I haven't seen anything quite like it since. Especially for the price.
That's pretty cool - it's easy to note notice how cheap a lot of this kind of stuff has become.
Earlier in the year I wanted to have a case made for one of of my electronics projects, and managed to find a free design from thingiverse.com, then pay a local person a small amount of money to get it 3D-printed.
Over time I've gotten more tempted to have a 3D-printer of my own, but I don't think I could quite justify the expense.
3d printing is incredibly powerful for hobbyist electronics- you can make professional quality stuff[1], only limited by your creativity and design sense. Home FDM printers are so good that you can 3d print working threads even on cheap machines! If you spring for a more expensive lithography or sintering machine, the parts are effectively indistinguishable from commercial parts (aside from obvious technical differences like the lack of witness marks).
The prices are just ridiculously low now as well. $160 + tax and shipping gets you a printer[2]. Obviously you pay for that in terms of continual fiddling and reduced quality (and the $220 MP select mini is probably a better choice), but even that's better than how it used to be. $600 will get you nearly hassle-free prints and $750 will get you one of the best printers on the market[3] (well, almost on the market). Arguably the new Prusa is the best option out there- right now it has features that no other printers do, certainly not with the same build size. Really impressive bit of kit[4].
IMO 3d printing is legitimately at the point where if you're making things at home, a 3d printer should be on your list of tools to buy even before a mill. Obviously it depends on what you want to make but it now takes way longer to learn and use modeling software than to set up and tweak your printer.
I bought my first 3d printer about a year ago and it quickly turned into one of the best things I've ever bought.
If you're at all interested in making things at home, there's almost no reason not to own a 3D printer.
I recently replaced the no-brand i3 clone that I initially bought with an Anycubic i3 Mega, and am very happy with the new machine. It's nice and rigid, easy to use, prints stick to the bed well while printing and pop off easily after printing. And all for less than £300.
As you said, the hardest part about it all is learning the CAD software.
I wouldn't spring for a Monoprice Delta until they fix the firmware issues. WiFi freezes, poor bed leveling, and X/Y dimensional accuracy are some of the issues that need to be fixed. Otherwise it's a nice unit for small builds.
I don't have much experience with acrylic cases that snap together, but all ones I tried so far were really easy to break, so that now I stay away from them unless I don't find alternatives.
LOL, and the weird Insert-Tab-A-into-Slot-B look. Like brushed aluminum faceplates or art-deco bakelite, down the road they're going to scream the era they were created in.
I think this method give a much better quality feel than 3D printed cases and seems to be a fair amount cheaper. I'd love to be able to do stuff like this. Thought before of gutting old printers and going to DIY CNC route. To much cool stuff to do!
The two-panel cases look very nice, but I hate the jigsaw-puzzle look of lasercut cases and mechanisms. It can be fairly strong but in practice people rarely put in the thought necessary for that. Carelessly designed lasercut cases can be very weak indeed.
On the other hand 3d printed cases can be beautiful and much more sophisticated[1] than lasercut. You aren't limited by the need for huge gussets and dozens of pain in the ass square nuts. Plus you can have curved surfaces.
I too am not such a fan of the jigsaw look, it was the rigidity and strength that I liked. If you say they aren't as strong in practice, perhaps 3D printing would be better. I've only ever seen really good prints come from expensive machines with a fair amount of post-processing going on. TBH currently I just get cases from Hammond most of the time. It's the creation of front panels as well that I'd like to achieve more cleanly. As it's just my hobby, I can just about put up with the misaligned square holes!
3D printed cases can look good with a bit of practice and the cost of a decent 3D printer is much lower than a laser cutter that can cut acrylic. Probably the most popular one with budger makers right now is the CR-10, which is big enough for pretty much any enclosure you could want and only costs $400. I make snap fit enclosures all the time with minimal (usually no) post processing.
There isn't a lot of difference between high and low end FDM printers in terms of print quality, the difference is more with UI polish and idiot-proofness. With a bit of practice however you can get very high quality prints out of any recent printer as long as it isn't a total mess in terms of design.
I think before getting any kit (if I do) it would be very sensible to master the software first. Have to look at some NYCNC tutorials and such to ensure I don't end up with an expensive bit of desk art.
I love that channel! And I understand completely, it's easy for tools like that to sit collecting dust unless you have the right combination of skills and interests. I usually tell people that a 3D printer is not at all worth it unless you're planning on designing and fabricating your own custom parts and you have a need to do so.
I also have a basic CNC machine which I like, but of the big three maker machines (3D printer, laser cutter, CNC) I'd say the 3D printer is probably the one you want first because it's the most versatile. I mostly use the CNC for fabricating one-off PCBs and while I get a lot of use out of it for that most of the other things I could do with it I just do with a 3D printer. The CNC is a lot messier and more complicated, especially if you wanna cut wood or metal and if you want to do true 3D carves you need to do some proper CAM, which is a whole different skill set from CAD.
Laser cutters have a lot of downsides, especially if you are looking into one at home. Smaller diode laser cutters/engravers are more accessible to someone at home, but they can have a hard time cutting acrylic, particularly clear acrylic. You can get fairly affordable CO2 lasers now in the $5-600 with good laser performance but apparently the electronics suck so you need to change em and focusing the beam is a pain (it's invisible). My main problem with lasers though is that they are potentially very dangerous. One mistake can leave you blind or on fire, which means you have to take a lot of care using them, adding hassle. Plus you need to manage fume extraction carefully, as laser cutting produces pretty harmful vapors that need to be filtered and vented.
What I'm getting at is: 3D printer - minimal hassle, maximum versatility, good for home. CNC machine - medium hassle, medium-low versatility, kinda borderline depending on your use. Laser - high hassle, medium versatility, I'd rather go to a dedicated shop than deal with one at home.
Side note, designing a DIY CNC mill is kinda hard because their mechanical requirements are actually quite extreme even at the low end. You'll end up spending a lot of time and money on it, especially when you can get a cheap-but-pretty-good mill from Aliexpress.
NY CNC is great, the guy is so enthusiastic to share his knowledge it's great. Plus some of the machining projects he does are quite something. Also refreshing to get exposure to the business side of running a shop, pricing decisions etc.
You are likely correct that it's better to get a kit even if on the cheaper end than go DIY. There is something about reusing parts that would otherwise go to landfill I really wanted to achieve. Perhaps I can find other uses for them, even if just mastering their operation with an arduino.
laser cutting also has the advantage that each attempt takes 30 seconds rather than 3 hours. so you have orders of magnitude more capacity for trial and error.
I agree! Fail fast, I don't know how many times a 3D Print has failed on me after half a day of printing, pretty depressing. I've had some spectacular failures on my laser and cnc machines that barely phased me compared to losing a print.
